M-W's McHugh Varsity845 girls' basketball player of year

Saturday

Mar 29, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Kerry McHugh drove opposing coaches crazy.

William Montgomery

Kerry McHugh drove opposing coaches crazy.

Whether it was swishing 3-pointers from impossible angles well behind the arc, her ability to make the perfect pass at just the right time or her knack for converting turnovers into points, McHugh was unstoppable on the offensive end of the floor.

McHugh, Monroe-Woodbury's 5-foot-1 senior point guard, grew up playing against the boys. She spent all summer working on her jump shot. The Varsity845's Player of the Year played the game with sheer joy. No matter how much havoc McHugh created on the court, she earned nothing but the utmost respect for playing the game the right way and doing so with a smile on her face.

That's what stuck with Kingston head coach Steve Garner, who has had to draw up a game plan for McHugh eight times over the past three seasons. Moments after No. 2 Kingston knocked off a No. 1-seeded Monroe-Woodbury team that carried a 19-0 record into the Section 9 Class AA championship game, McHugh told Garner something he had never heard before from an opposing player.

"Beyond her basketball, she's a classy, classy player," Garner said. "I will not forget what she said to me when we were in the line shaking hands. She told Lyric (Blanch, Kingston's Sr. guard) this, too. 'You guys made me better.'

McHugh broke ankles with her ball-handling skills, and she broke hearts with every 3-pointer that sailed straight through the net, but she also found a way to forge friendships with the players who ought to be her fiercest rivals.

"Honestly, me and Kerry are actually really close," Blanch said. "It's kind of awkward because people don't expect it, but we're really close. The way she carried her team this year and everything, she's just an awesome person. As a player, she's a great player."

McHugh, however, didn't exactly come into Monroe-Woodbury's first practice brimming with hope. The Crusaders had lost four starters to graduation in June and McHugh was the lone holdover. Not only would she have to try to get four relatively inexperienced teammates up to speed, she'd also have a target on her back as the one player other teams had to stop.

Once Monroe-Woodbury started winning, McHugh's confidence grew. When McHugh played with the swagger that allowed her to take any shot at any time, she made her team awfully tough to beat.

"I knew I had to step up because we lost the four starters and I had to start with a whole new group," she said. "But we worked together really well. "

McHugh's basketball career will continue at the next level when she plays for SUNY Cortland. On Dec. 16, McHugh scored 23 points in the Crusaders' 85-30 win at Roy C. Ketcham and was noticed by Ketcham boys' basketball assistant Kristie Meyer-Worrell, a former Cortland player and assistant coach. Meyer-Worrell sent a text message to her former college coach, Cortland's Jeannette Mosher, and told her to check in on McHugh. The rest, as they say, is history.

For Monroe-Woodbury coach Linda Trapani, McHugh's success on the court is attributable to her dedication, focus and tenacity. But, Trapani said, what really made McHugh's senior season special was seeing her smile.

"I think this year she came back and she was so much more confident and she embraced her role as a leader," Trapani said. "That was the biggest difference. ... I think last year she lacked a little bit of confidence being the leader, and this year she had fun with it. ... I don't think any competition really frightened her as much as it did last year. She just had more fun with the game this year. It was so much fun to watch."

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